Author: vuongisabelle

Under the artistic leadership of Thea Reifler and Philipp Bergmann, I am part of the curatorial board of Shedhalle together with artists Lucie Tuma and Michelangelo Miccolis. Shedhalle is a Zurich public institution for contemporary arts that Reifler and Bergmann propose to make a reference for process-based-art as part of their concept of extended exhibition format PROTOZONES 2020-2025.

This report, to which I have largely contributed, has just been published by the National Cultural Dialogue which brings together representative of cities, cantons and the Confederation.For the first time, the conditions in the sector, still insufficient despite many efforts made in recent years, are confirmed by statistical data collected from more than 60 funding bodies and as many dance venues and festivals.

This conversation on speculation, utopia and simulation between future researcher and cultural worker Isabelle Vuong and the artists Valerian Blos, Mikala Hyldig Dal, and Gosia Lehmann both reflects and speculates on new categories of present and future times. In order to open paths to doing and undoing reality, mental models, imaginaries and artistic works about the future are presented, and give new insights into the present. The artists introduce how they work with utopia, simulacra and re-enactment to better understand the relations between reality and fiction, materiality and immateriality, between past, present and future.

The future? A modern conceptIn our Western (post-)modern time, the future has become the focus of all attention. Whereas the pre-modern era paid reverence to a divine order which drew its legitimacy from the past, the modern age is characterized by a consciousness of the future which emerges together with the Enlightenment, its technical breakthroughs and capitalist societies. Preservation of a divine order is therefore gradually replaced by the quest for novelty and innovation specific to modern times, which in turn hold the promise of better futures.

This lecture-workshop is built around two parts: the first part is aimed at deconstructing the common sense built around the future as conceptualized in a Western perspective; the second part aims at reconstructing another concept of future, thought of as a process “in the making”.